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  4. Synchron Libraries Volume and Presence Matching

  • Synchron Libraries Volume and Presence Matching

    • synchron player • volum • balance
    M
    M

    Hi,

    so I added some Synchron libraries to my collection recently. Namely Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion and Duality Strings.

    What really grind my gears is, that the libraries seem to be pretty different in volume and presence, even with the same mix apllied to every instrument (e.g. "Classic Room-Mix"). While the strings sound pretty balanced right out of the box, the brass sound puny, way to quiet and far away. The woodwinds on the other hand are blaringly loud, way too close and piercing through the whole orchestra. I own the standard variety of all mentioned products.

    Am I ignorant of some very basic set-up rules or is this intentional? With my VI libraries and Mir-x presents that wasn't an issue at all. I load every instrument up in Vienna Ensemble pro server and rout them to Cubase. The volume and presence difference are also true for standalone instances of Synchron player.

    My current work-around is to disable the reverb on each channel and treat every section with a seperate fader. But I wonder if there is a preset, which puts every instrument in its intended place in the orchestra and on its natural volume. I tried much, but, nothing seems to satisfy me.

    I'd be rather thankful for any advice, before I start building template after template with stupid mistakes in it. My goal is to just load up the instruments and have them placed in their respective position in the orchestra and tweak from there.

    Michael
  • Andreas8420A
    VSL Team
    Andreas8420A
    @MickAle said:
    But I wonder if there is a preset, which puts every instrument in its intended place in the orchestra and on its natural volume.

    Hi Michael,

    That's the case with the factory Mixer Presets. Please keep in mind that there is a method behind the orchestra seating and recording. Brass has to be placed at the far end of the orchestra - while woodwinds are closer and much more centered. Otherwise, you could never balance out the orchestral forces.

    VSL Team | Product Specialist & Media Editing
  • Beat KaufmannB
    Beat KaufmannB
    last edited
    last edited

    Hi Micheal

    The problem with using presets is always that these ‘finished mixes’ only really match the piece of music with which they were created. You can try this out for yourself by selecting the strings together with the mixer preset ‘Classic’. The strings tend to be pushed far to the side (L<>R) or in other words, the stereo centre is quite ‘empty’. Bad if you want to play a little night music. The string presets are intended to include the woodwinds, brass and percussion.

    It therefore makes sense to A) combine all woodwinds, all brass instruments, all strings and all percussion instruments in one bus channel and then adjust the volume of these different bus channels to each other. This way you can, for example, give the brass instruments a little extra punch or amplify an overall quiet section, etc.

    B) I would adapt the VSL presets to your needs and then save them as a new user preset. This is perfectly OK because, as I said, presets are only ever a starting point.

    C) The best way to customise the individual instruments to your needs is to make all the preset settings yourself. It is best to start with the mixer preset ‘DEFAULT’. This takes a little practice and time. However, you can save the new settings you have found and optimise them over time. If you want to do this, I would first think about where which instrument should play on your virtual stage...

    As an example... https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/images/hungarian-dance_11small.jpg

    Have fun and good luck

    Beat

    - Tips & Tricks while using Samples of VSL.. see at: https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/ - Tutorial "Mixing an Orchestra": https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/mixing-an-orchestra/
  • M
    M

    Thank you both so much for your answers!

    I know that the presets are intentionally kept sounding differentyl, and the idea with assigning each group to a seperate bus is also very helpful. At least now I know, that I didn't do something awfully wrong - I wasn't just sure that the differences in sound were intentional.